Huge thanks to the AIA’s talented Dreel Crafters, who have created a striking and poignant Remembrance Day installation at Dreel Halls. Hand knitted poppies adorn the front entrance of our community building, cascading over a five metre drop from a window at the front of the 16th century St Nicholas Tower, creating a beautiful display and wonderful tribute of remembrance.

Volunteers sourced the fishing net, with assistance from Pittenweem Harbour Master, Steven Middleton, who very kindly gave support to the project by cutting and shaping the net to create two drapes to hang above the entrance of the building. The repurposed fishing net is representative of our fishing heritage in the East Neuk and creates a unique backdrop for the poppies. The hand crafted display also includes poppies on stakes dotted around the graveyard surrounding the building, garlands wrapped around posts and three poppy covered wreaths.

The Dreel Crafters group started in 2022 and now meets twice weekly at Dreel Halls. The crafters installed a small remembrance display of 250 hand knitted poppies outside our heritage building and surrounding graveyard in 2024. After a positive response from the community the group were inspired to do more. Over the past twelve months, members of the group continued to regularly knit poppies, extending the invitation to the local community to contribute to their Poppies Project. The shared project connected people in a new way, it encouraged others to get involved and contribute with a shared aim. Friends, family members and people from the wider community have donated their knitting to the group’s project, some from as far afield as Wales.

The group collected over 2,000 poppies for this years Remembrance Day display at Dreel Halls and the surrounding Anstruther Wester graveyard, home to a Commonwealth War Grave. The Upper Hall of Dreel Halls, the former Anster Wester Town Hall, was at one time the meeting place of the Royal British Legion. The Poppies Project highlights both the past and present use of our historic building, whilst paying tribute and remembering those we have lost.

Looking ahead, the AIA plan to work with their resident baby and toddler group to create paper plate poppy crafts in November, allowing the youngest members of the local community to take part and learn about the meaning. A collection tin will be held at Dreel Halls for donations for the Scottish Poppy Appeal, organised by Anstruther, Cellardyke & Kilrenny Community Council.

Anstruther Improvements Association would like to carry out some new planting in Anstruther Wester Graveyard to enhance green space, improve biodiversity, and make the area more enjoyable for the community.  Details of the proposal are outlined in the diagram below and we would begin in October 2025.

We would like to hear your thoughts on the proposed planting plan. Your feedback will help shape the final design and ensure it reflects community needs.

PLEASE SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS HERE

Paper copies of the consultation are available from Dreel Halls. To get a copy or find out more, please contact: heather@anstrutherimprovements.org

Visitors to Anstruther and Cellardyke can walk Tide Line, the art installation created by Julie Brook for the national coastal arts festival, the Beach of Dreams.

Julie has written this about her piece:

TIDE LINE is an invitation to walk in the intertidal space of the seabed made from the surrounding stones.  The tides are a powerful expression of the gravitational pull of the moon on the oceans. At the moments of the incoming tide 2 hours before high tide and at the outgoing tide 2 hours after there is a dynamic tension that Tide Line reveals where you can see the shift and change of the tide clearly marked and sense this gravitational pull.

TIDE LINE is sited near the coastal path between Cellardyke and Caiplie Farm. It was commissioned by Beach of Dreams with Fife Coast & Countryside Trust and Creative Scotland in May 2025.

In February 2024, the AIA invited Beach of Dreams Artistic Director, Ali Pretty, to run a weekend of creative workshops at Dreel Halls for six local groups.

Participants came from six communities: AIA Trustees, volunteers from the Dreel Burn water quality monitoring group, Dreel Crafters, St Ayles Rowing Club, the Cellardyke Tidal Pool and Footprint East Neuk/Dreelside Woods.

Ali led the community groups through a process to design and create a silk pennant for each group, that celebrates the beauty of the coastal environment where the Dreel Burn meets the sea, records the group’s connection to this coastline and represents the hopes and dreams the groups have for our local area.

The pennants will form part of a national artwork collection and a UK-wide coastal arts festival.

The groups’ output will be posted on the map on the Beach of Dreams website. The silk pennants will be added to the national collection on 22nd May at Castle Street Beach, when a group of local community representatives will meet the Beach of Dreams coastal walkers, as they pass through Anstruther, and hand them over.

You can join the Beach of Dreams coastal walkers at any point on the Fife walk, which will take place between 14th and 29th May in collaboration with The Big Hoof. The Big Hoof will bring horses and walkers to join the coastal path walk, raising money for charities with a focus on mental health. The walk will pass through Anstruther on 22nd May on its way between Ruby Bay and Crail.

We wish all our members and supporters a happy and healthy 2025. 

Membership
Please consider renewing your AIA membership for 2024-2025 or joining the AIA if you haven’t already. You can do that here.

Anster Cinema: Wicked Little Letters
Sunday 5th January, 6.45pm, Dreel Halls
When the upright residents of a 1920s English seaside town receive a spate of colourful poison pen letters, the finger is pointed at foul-mouthed outsider and lone parent, Rose Gooding, played by Jessie Buckley.
Buckley and Olivia Coleman shine as the stars of this diverting satire of postwar society, and are ably supported by some of British comedy’s finest talent.
Dir: Thea Sharrock
Cert: 15
102m
Tickets: £6 / £3 under 18s – available on the door
Refreshments available by donation to the AIA

Anster Nicht: Why Burns did not visit North East Fife or St Andrews
Thursday 16th January, 7.30pm, Dreel Halls
Robert Burns never visited St Andrews or the East Neuk despite there being many good reasons why he should have: Robert Fergusson, ‘his elder brother in the muse’ and much admired by Burns, was a graduate of St Andrews; landowners and influential people from Fife were well known to Burns from his time in Edinburgh; St Andrews had been at the centre of Scotland’s religious revolution, and for nearly 600 years it had the largest roofed building in Scotland.
Neil McNair is Past President of the Robert Burns World Federation and his talk will focus on the reasons why Burns did not come to our part of Scotland, providing an overview of cultural life in St Andrews between 1760 and 1830.
Members and non-members are welcome to attend. If you are not yet a member of the AIA you can attend individual Anster Nichts for £3 per event. Membership is £10 per year.

Late Winter Coffee Morning
Saturday 15th February, 10.30am – 12pm, Dreel Halls
Join us at our late Winter coffee morning for all the generations. We can offer you a cup of tea or coffee, some home-baking, a book swap and stories, a craft table and a good blether.
Entry: £3.50 per adult, £1.50 per child. Drop in any time between 10.30am -12pm.

Dreel Babies & Toddlers is a popular weekly social get-together for parents and carers of babies and toddlers living in the Anstruther, Kilrenny and Cellardyke area. The group will be back after the winter break from Friday 10th January and meets each Friday morning during term time between 10am and 11:30am.  The cost to attend is £2.00 per adult and child, with 50p per extra additional child.

Dreel Crafters is a chance to grab a cuppa with some friendly faces and have a ‘craft and a natter’ with a bunch of beginners and more-experienced makers. Knitting, crochet, scrapbooking, cross stitch, embroidery, no matter what you enjoy and what your skill level, bring along a craft project, get comfortable and get crafting.The AIA will provide some wool and needles for anyone new to knitting who wants to have a go at learning with us. 
The group will be back after the winter break from Tuesday 14th January and meets twice a week, on Tuesday evening 7pm to 8.30pm and Thursday afternoon 2pm to 4pm. The cost to attend is £3 per person, which includes refreshments.

Dreel Burn Project
You can find out more about the project here, read about our latest activities here and join our Facebook group here.

Please contact julia@anstrutherimprovements.org or phone 07497 370556 if you would like more information about any events or groups. 

As part of our Dreel Burn catchment initiative, we have been asked by project partner, Credit Nature, to help gather some data on birds to fill gaps in existing data.  Volunteers of all ages and with any level of bird knowledge can help us to build bigger and better data on the birdlife in the Dreel Burn catchment.

We are collaborating with Fife Coast & Countryside Trust and Credit Nature to do this via a BioBlitz event on the Balcaskie Estate. The activity will start at 9am on Thursday 17^th October, with small groups of 2-4 volunteers walking prescribed areas of the estate and recording the birds seen in that area. Each walk should take no more than 3 hours to complete, and volunteers are invited to gather at Balcaskie House afterwards for some warming soup and home baking.

We are seeking volunteers to help gather the data; volunteers could be experienced bird watchers or less experienced but enthusiastic and keen to learn.

If you are interested in joining this activity as a volunteer you can sign up here or if you have any questions please email Cristin.Lambert@fifecountryside.co.uk at Fife Coast & Countryside Trust.

Download a programme here.

Download the poster here.

2023 was the final year of our three-year funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to establish the Anster Community Development Project and employ our first Community Development Worker, Julia Priestley. The funding has transformed the AIA, allowing us to make a step change in the range of events and activities we can offer our community at Dreel Halls and our effectiveness as a community group outside the walls of our heritage home.

We completed our season of Anster Nichts at the start of the year with talks by Dr Andrew Blight (The Biodiversity of Coastal Marine Ecosystems) and Harry Watkins (Plants on the move). The new season began in September with talks by Nikki and Claire Pollock (Rooting for a Better Future at Ardross Farm) and Team Footprint (Bring Back Woodland to the East Neuk). Our October talk and AGM were threatened by Storm Babet; Dr Anne-Marie Weijmans was kind enough to brave the elements for those who could make it and gave us a fascinating gallop around the solar system. We will reschedule Dr Weijmans’ full talk for next season, and the teaser she gave us suggests it is one not to be missed. Our thanks to all our speakers, who generously give up their time to educate and entertain us. 

Anster Cinema continued with monthly film screenings at Dreel Halls, usually on the first Sunday of the month at 6.45pm. We offered a free screening of Ava DuVernay’s searing documentary 13^th and finished the year with the ever-popular Meet Me in St Louis. Another highlight was a community screening of a one-off film, The Real Dreel, by local filmmaker Bill Bruce, capturing some of the voices of the Dreel Burn community. The event included live music by Tom Houston, with opportunities for our audience to join in making it a memorable evening. 

We enjoyed another busy and successful Duck Race, continuing our new tradition of an outdoor prize giving and bonnet parade. The Design a Duck colouring competition has also joined the new Duck Race format, and Jacqui Irvine and Pam Gough had the tricky task of choosing the winners from a terrific field of entries. Our thanks to Bowhouse Food Market for offering us the opportunity to promote the Duck Race at the March market. The biggest thanks, though, must go to all the people who volunteer on the day and the businesses who sell our sponsored ducks and donate prizes – our busiest event of the year simply could not happen without them.

Dreel Babies & Toddlers, our early years social group, entered its third year. Our thanks must go to volunteer Katherine Harley, who coordinated the group throughout 2023, along with a dedicated group of supportive weekly parent helpers. The group also benefited hugely from regular volunteers Jacqui Irvine and Gill Fraser. The group enjoyed dressing up and hosting parties to celebrate the King’s Coronation, Halloween and Christmas.The parents, carers, babies and toddlers participated in crafts, ceramic painting, songs and rhymes, and organised outreach activities led by the Scottish Fisheries Museum.

Dreel Friends, our community café, continued to provide space for members of our community to meet and socialise and keep in touch with community activities. The regular audience enjoyed the teas, home baking, book swap, stories for younger children and a seasonal, themed craft table. This activity is supported by regular volunteers and in 2023 partnered with East Neuk Lighthouse, Bilingual Families in Fife and Tayside and the Scottish Fisheries Museum to provide activities for young visitors.

Dreel Crafters has thrived in 2023, growing in popularity and providing opportunities for volunteering, skill sharing and connecting with like-minded crafters. Yet again, members of the group contributed knitting to raise funds for the Duck Race and were at the centre of the AIA’s Vintage Day in October.  Here, Dreel Halls hosted traditional vintage teas, vintage jewellery, clothing and craft stalls, charity stalls, including Anstruther’s very own Community Kist, and a raffle. Visitors had a lovely time and the AIA is grateful to the volunteers, home bakers, crafters, stall holders and local businesses who supported the day. Like the Duck Race, Vintage Day raises critical funds for the AIA’s Anster Community Development Project and Dreel Halls.

In 2023, activity around the Dreel Shelled Wall Restoration Project grew. Behind the scenes, the AIA is working to ensure that the project has the permissions and resources to proceed; meanwhile the public focus is on collecting the shells to complete the work. We had a sunny September Buckie Treasure Hunt at Shell Bay in Elie, and volunteers also started the long process of sorting and bagging shells.

The Dreel Burn Project went from strength to strength in 2023, and in total the Dreel Burn Project has attracted over £500,000 of funding to the East Neuk area for environmental outcomes. Our community science volunteers completed a full year of water quality monitoring, and, with funding from The National Lottery Community Fund via Climate Action Fife and St Andrews University Community Fund, we were able to recruit new volunteers to be trained in the Riverfly Partnership’s Monitoring Initiative. This team of volunteers will monitor the health of the burn through the presence or absence of pollution-sensitive invertebrates. We have partnered with Footprint East Neuk’s Dreelside Woods group to organise regular litter picks along the burn, and, with the help of Forth Rivers Trust, delivered our first Fish in the Classroom project at Anstruther Primary School, allowing P5s to nurture brown trout eggs in the classroom before releasing them into the burn. We held three engagement sessions: in April and September we opened Dreel Halls to the public for Community River Sessions, the latter allowing us to celebrate one year of the project. We also attended the Anstruther Harbour Festival with the Forth Rivers Trust’s interactive river table. We are lucky to be supported by a Steering Group to help guide the direction of the project.

The first landscape intervention in the catchment, led by Forth Rivers Trust, received full funding from NatureScot and Fife Environment Trust in 2023. This will see the creation of a new wetland area, installation of leaky dams, more tree planting along the burn and the removal of a ford which impedes fish passage in 2024. These should increase the burn’s biodiversity and address flooding risk caused by climate change. 

The success of our community activity drew attention to the Dreel Burn in 2023, and the AIA was invited to join a partnership project led by Fife Coast & Countryside Trust to demonstrate within the Dreel Burn catchment how nature restoration might be funded by private investment. This partnership project is funded by Fife Council and the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS), a collaboration between the Scottish Government, NatureScot and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and the AIA has been tasked with delivering community engagement activity for the project.  

In September we had some cracking, if blustery, weather for Doors Open Day at Dreel Halls. Our volunteers were able to offer visitors great views, tours of the St Nicholas Tower and delicious home baking. Volunteers also manage the AIA garden, just over the bridge from Dreel Halls.  

In November thanks to funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, the AIA was able to thank all the wonderful volunteers who offer up their time and skills, at a celebration at Dreel Halls. It was a wonderful evening, and even our volunteer Committee and Honorary Patrons were able to relax and enjoy the evening.

The AIA is part of the East Neuk Youth Network and participated in the 2023 Spring East Neuk Family Learning Roadshow in Crail. In the summer of 2023 we were delighted to welcome back the Fèis Rois Ceilidh Trail’s talented young musicians for a fantastic evening of traditional music at Dreel Halls. We also took part again in the November Bowhouse Food Market, selling home-made seasonal apple crumbles and raising much needed funds for the AIA. 

In 2023, Julia provided support to and partnered with a wide range of community groups and individuals, including Anstruther Skatepark Group, Dreelside Woods Community Asset Transfer, Anstruther & District Allotment Association and Dreelside Park Upgrade. Towards the end of the year, Julia also carried out a community survey about the Anster Community Development Project, which has provided invaluable evidence for planning, monitoring and fundraising. 

Hall use saw a healthy uplift in 2023, and our thanks must go to AIA Trustee Alan Stewart, who is the face of Dreel Halls for our hall hirers. Dreel Halls currently hosts a wide range of regular activities, including exercise groups and musical rehearsals, as well as private celebrations. All current events and activities in the AIA’s programme can be found on the website and Facebook pages.

In 2023 we received financial and in-kind support from, among others, The National Lottery Community Fund, Fife Council, St Andrews University Community Fund, Community Kist, Norah Webber Trust, The St Andrews Ball, William Stewart, East Neuk Tabletop Games, Balcaskie Estate, Bowhouse Food Market, James Aird & Sons, Anstruther Co-Op, Morrisons St Andrews, Amazon Smile, Climate Action Fife and Anstruther’s many local businesses, who support our events and activities. We had almost 100 paying members this year, who believe in the AIA’s work and want to support us to continue with it.  In 2023 we were selected as one of the Co-op Local Community Fund’s supported charities, and members of the Co-op can select us as their chosen cause, increasing the amount of funding we will receive.  The Trustees would like to extend thanks to Julia on behalf of the AIA members. Julia works tirelessly, and always cheerfully, to support the community to make things happen. She has transformed the AIA over the past three years, enabling us to offer around 11,000 engagements with people between 2020 and 2023 through the Anster Community Development Project, and we are delighted to be able to retain her for another three years thanks to funding from FIRNS and The National Lottery Community Fund. We would also like to thank those who use and value our home, Dreel Halls, ensuring it remains relevant and vibrant.

In the year ended 31 December 2023 there were receipts of £19,892 (2022 £19,426) from regular events and donations and £40,713 (2022 £26,882) received in restricted grants. There were unrestricted payments of £25,618 (2022 £27,914) on charitable activities together with a further £44,846 (2022 £31,029) from the restricted fund.

We are delighted to introduce Sophie Palmer, our first AIA Youth Leader. Sophie is a familiar face to many AIA supporters as she has been volunteering with us for the last 12 years. In this new role Sophie is keen to develop a youth section to support young people with volunteering and their wellbeing in the community:

‘I have been helping out at the AIA since I was in P1 (12 years ago!). I really enjoy helping people and having things to do. I value the opportunities that the AIA have given me and the connections that I’ve
made while volunteering. Volunteering for the AIA has given me a reason to get off my phone and out of the house while also making new friends, improving both my mental and physical wellbeing.
Alongside helping with the AIA I have volunteered as a prefect and a wellbeing ambassador at Waid Academy which allows me to support the teachers and students around the school. I have also become better at public speaking as my work with the AIA has involved me giving talks to members of the public at events like Doors Open Day. Through volunteering with the AIA I have become more connected with the whole community as I’ve had the opportunity to be educated by them while helping out at Anster Nichts and educate them through Doors Open Day, as well as getting to talk to them at events and learn about their lives and interests. I am currently developing a youth section for the AIA to support young people with volunteering and their wellbeing in the community.’

You can find out more about AIA volunteering for young people aged 12 – 25yrs here. If you have would like to get in touch, please email our community development worker, Julia Priestley on julia@anstrutherimprovements.org.